"Opposite World" (is a working title)

[Tieryn]

Okay, I've got a semi-developed (and will do more as I type) idea for a map concept... I haven't got a draft yet sorry, but I'll get one after some gameplay discussion if anyone is interested to help out on the abstract for a short while.

So we've always seen territories as a positive. Lets flip the coin... You start off with a large number of deploys... say 50. players start far enough away from one another to avoid any first round nastiness. The first round will be deploy into your base and start building your base. Around your base will exist several interconnected technology structures... You can build them to different levels, and at different levels they will perform different functions. Holding a whole tower will be a sort of bonus.

The twist is that for every territory you hold, you get -1 deploy per turn... So your 50 deploys, effectively drops with respect to how much technology you purchase (have to keep your generators running hot). I haven't worked out special gameplay things for what the technology levels do but that will be some fun later!

After a few rounds of sorting out your technology, you will start moving out from your base onto the battlefield. Many territory features and land formations. But every one you take is poisoned ground, and penalises you deploys... There might be some exceptions to these rules for holding territs (that would almost be a bonus... a territory that doesn't give you -1? Positively glowing)

Lots of possibilities and scope of options... Loads of really intriguing gameplay if done right. Please post what you see your vision of the graphics for this map as.. And also a possible name? Opposite World is a working title.

My first visualisation is something like 8 spread out base camps, with stacked/tower territories for technologies. Then a battlefield with funky battlefield continent area bonuses. Perhaps we are on a lava planet or something.... Perhaps a quasi-magical battleground where evil nasty things (tm) happen... I dunno, possibliites are sprawling... What do you think?

[greenoaks]

while reading it i was visualising terminator as the look of the battlefield.

[TaCktiX]

I think it's an interesting idea, having deployment work in reverse. The difficulty will be balancing it so that somebody who owns 2/3 the map won't get wiped completely out by a guy who hasn't done anything but sit on his deployment stack.

[DiM]

just 1 question, why would i bother taking any terits??
i just sit and relax and deploy my 50 armies per turn on the same spot. whoever makes the first move and gets his bonus lowered loses cause i have a huge stack.

so unless you come up with something to spice it up i see nothing but a never ending build game

[InkL0sed]

just 1 question, why would i bother taking any terits??
i just sit and relax and deploy my 50 armies per turn on the same spot. whoever makes the first move and gets his bonus lowered loses cause i have a huge stack.

so unless you come up with something to spice it up i see nothing but a never ending build game

You'd probably need some kind of resource to reverse the effect.

Also, I think 50 armies is too much to begin with, especially if you have some kind of "bonus"/anti-poison thing

[whitestazn88]

obviously this needs some work to avoid building games. maybe you start with a regular deploy, but when you reach a certain area of the map, such as the battle ground, thats when the negative bonus comes into effect? or you have to hold a certain something to start out with the massive bonus?

[Mr. Squirrel]

This map sounds crazily confusing and would require entirely new ways of strategizing without totally abandoning the classic gameplay style. Sounds good!

But, even though it is a great idea, it will require lots of thought to bring about. As people have already mentioned, you would need to find a way to discourage people from just sitting there and doing nothing. Why don't you try to make it so that when you conquer territories, you initially lose reinforcements every turn, but once you conquer a whole group of territories, it gives another huge bonus. This would help to keep people conquering without losing your initial idea.

One more thing: this is starting to sound like one of those symmetrical maps where everyone has the exact same area around them and victory is decided by who has luckier dice rolls. Try not to do that. Make it similar to the Feudal War map where everyone has almost identical possibilities but there is still a lot of strategizing involved.

In short, I am totally behind the making of this map. The sooner you get a draft together, the better.

[Riskbreaker88]

I would also like to say that I really like the map idea.

The concept sounds different and I like the previous suggestion that you get larger bonuses by trying to expand out though its actually negative until you own the whole thing.

My suggestion would be special abilities like being able to attack all the way across the map. Say you take over a whole tower (or base, etc.), then with that you get a helipad or something and be able to attack without going to the battle field. Maybe even missiles for bombardments? Just don't limit yourself. There are a lot of things that can be done for something like this.

As for name suggestion, maybe Total War? IDK. Need to see the map layout and everything first. Something will eventually come through.